Iron Block
A large freely suspended steel plate is located in a steel block with the same material surface on all sides. Both elements serve as resonating bodies for making a wide spectrum of iron sounds audible. On the one hand they are all inside the body and penetrate the outside through the closed form. On the other hand they are set locally in such a way that individual sounds correspond to concretely comprehensible listening points behind the unmarked outer surface of the cuboid. The monochrome and unmarked material surface, which appears to the eye to be the same at every point, is structured by my auditory processing in such a way that the eye follows the ear and can thus name exact sound points. These change constantly over the lateral surfaces of the body.
The freely suspended steel plate inside serves to produce pure resonant sounds of spatial extension. Since there is no contact between the two parts of the material, these sounds can be understood as spatial distances. This audible spectrum, from extreme proximity and rapid movement to almost stationary sounds that set the entire volume of the hollow body in vibration, makes itself visible as a seemingly unpredictable auditory image of a visible object.
In the iron block, two opposing perceptions of time confront each other: the massiveness of form and material and the stillness and calmness as optical properties. The effects are detached from time in their permanence and as an image of sound stretched in its phases of sound. Sometimes selectively condensed, of a higher presence than being present in time.
The rapid back and forth between eye and ear, expectation and disappointment, silence and noise, unpredictability and hope for rules makes the sculpture an ever changing state of reception; a continuous translation between hearing and seeing.
Permanente Klangskulptur für den Campus der Fachhochschule in Neumühlen-Diedrichsdorf, Kiel 1997
Steel cuboid 8m x 3m x 2,5m; Linear and rotary magnets; electronic control unit.
